


inherent tenderness in the tragedy of narrative irony

by jojotier



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Eye Trauma, Fluff, Fridge Horror, Hair Braiding, M/M, Post-Canon, Tenderness, Trypophobia, post MAG 160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23181835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jojotier/pseuds/jojotier
Summary: Martin is braiding Jon's hair. They have a routine here at the end of the world.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 3
Kudos: 120





	inherent tenderness in the tragedy of narrative irony

It’s as Martin is gingerly braiding Jon’s hair, locks damp and slowly attempting to coil around his fingers in their telltale curls, that he sees the eyes that adorn the back of Jon’s neck. They stare back at Martin, blinking in the sudden light of the buzzing, dim fluorescent bulb in Daisy’s bathroom, the white illuminated in a faintly sick hue that still shone white-out white against brown skin. The irises are as bright as Martin remembers- chestnut brown with flecks of amber that, if only the weather permitted, would glitter in the sunlight like warm carnelian agate.

The Martin of a few years ago- hell, the Martin of a few months ago- would have frozen the moment his eyes locked onto the gaze of those eyes. He would have stilled his entire body, muscles locking up rabbit-quick, and held his breath as he watched the black crater of a pupil, of two pupils, of five, constricting then enlarging, studying his face as though committing it to a memory that would never surface in their day to day. Such scrutiny would have taken his breath away with certainty and the slow constriction of lungs.

Now, Martin merely meets their gaze with a somber sort of pang crackling in his chest and continues to braid, fingers deliberately gentle. 

Jon had the kind of hair that knotted easily and became the bane of one’s existence once overly fastidious grandmothers got an idea in their heads and a thickly bristled brush in their hands. It was the sort that was grasped and pulled harshly by hands looking to whip the mass of black curls into presentable compliance; the kind pulled and tugged on with frustration by an owner that, once he grew, never did get around to learning the more gentle way of combing it out. 

Gentle meant going slowly, prolonging the inevitable- it meant partitioning and styling and enough water to drown a fish. Gentle meant no harried, frenzied nights alone in the damp and dark, roughly shoving one’s fingers through one’s hair to bring it to a semblance of normalcy, attempting to find even the slightest bit of lightness when the wet thudding footsteps of something behind drew nearer, and nearer, nearer and nearer and nearer with no stop no surrender only teeth and foul words and static cuts through the fraying edges of labyrinthine corridors slicing meat and bones wearing to the nubs of gums bleeding into eyes

Martin smoothed the plait between his fingers to comfort himself, more than Jon. Jon was used to his own nightmares. Martin was getting used to Jon’s nightmares too.

There are nerve-endings in Jon’s hair, but Jon never seems to realize. He never feels what the strings of dark red feel, shuddering lightly underneath Martin’s touch as he brushes over them and pulls them into the braid as well. When Jon will inevitably reach a hand up and run the pads of his beautiful, scarred fingers across Martin’s handiwork, Martin knows that those nerves will shy away and hide, never for Jon to know of. The little eyes at the tips of Jon's fingers- some human, some animal, cat's eyes mixing in among bulbous goldfish eyes and speckled horizontal pupils from frogs' and goats' eyes- would close up, and he would never feel their fluttering on his skin.

Martin pulls the two braids he’d woven from either side of Jon’s head and brings them up, gently tying them behind his head in a bun against the free-flowing tendrils of the rest of Jon’s hair. Martin has been wanting to try some new things, of course- when he did his mother’s hair his mother never let him experiment, never let him linger, not like this- but he never has the heart to tie Jon’s hair up completely. He sees the thousands of eyes, peering through Jon’s hair, as though the back of Jon’s head is nonexistent. As if his skull is hollowed out for something to crawl inside of, make it their home. As though what remained of Jon's hair was a curtain to peek through, separating whatever lived in Jon's brain and Martin. 

It may not be all wrong to say that, either. There are more eyes every day.

Jon turns around to face Martin, more out of instinct than anything else. Eyes dot his skin like boils, flecking every inch of skin like constellations against deep brown. Martin thinks that sometimes, when he thinks that, the eyes do shift on Jon’s skin in the pattern of real constellations- as though showing off. As though preening underneath Martin’s attention. The eyes ringing around Jon’s wrist, on his palms and the delicate skin at his pulse, close as though in pleasure when he reaches up to touch his hair.

The only spot the eyes don’t touch Jon’s skin is on the top half of his face, where the chemical burn marks ring around the unseeing whites of his eyes. 

Jon asks, “How does it look?” every morning because they’ve settled into a routine here at the end of the world.

Martin smiles though Jon can’t see it anymore. He kisses Jon’s forehead, right on the edge where scarred skin ends and the seam of an extra eyelid begins, so he can feel it. “You look beautiful, love.” He says this every morning, and every morning, it feels like veneration. 

As the reddened light filters in through the foggy glass of the window, Martin thinks that soon, he’ll tell Jon about it. About the eyes. About the nerves. About the secondhand visions. 

Not yet, Martin tells himself every morning. It’s the look on Jon’s face that stops him every time- content, peaceful, so overwhelmingly relieved that it breaks Martin’s heart and makes him tremble down in his very bones a little more with the fear that only comes with narrative irony and deliberately playing with forces far outside one’s control; that one wrong move will bring everything crashing down in a haze of rending, seeking, mutilating death.

Not yet.


End file.
